


Drifting

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Angst, Castiel in the Bunker, Coda, Episode: s11e04 Baby, Ficlet, Hurt Castiel, M/M, Nurturing Dean Winchester, Supportive Sam Winchester, Talk of mathematics, netflix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:35:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they get back to the bunker, Cas isn't completely healed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drifting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dimtraces](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/gifts), [ExpatGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/gifts).



He finds Cas sitting in a spare room, the light from the hallway casting a stripe over his body. The bed he’s sitting on can’t have been used in years and Dean has no idea why Cas has chosen to tidy himself away into here.

“Cas?” he asks. 

Castiel doesn’t move. He’s staring at nothing, probably going over and over everything and persuading himself he’s got to atone somehow. Pay penance. Distracting him with Netflix and case files was only every going to work for so long.

“Hey, Cas?” Dean says again, louder this time. 

As he steps into the room, the floor creaking under his weight, Cas blinks and turns to look at him. A frown mars his face.

“What are you doing sitting in the dark?” Dean asks. 

He gets no answer. Cas just huffs and looks away, down at his hands, as though he’s going to learn anything new that way. 

Dean crosses the room and sits down next to Cas, the mattress giving slightly as he settles. He can smell the dust in the air. If Cas is going to claim the room, they’ll need to air it out, sort out the bedding. 

For a while, Dean sits in silence, only his breathing doing anything to push back against the dull, leaden weight of everything that isn’t being said. Cas isn’t breathing, near as Dean can make out. It’s odd. He’s sure Cas has taken to breathing, even though it seems angels don’t need to, but maybe he forgets when he’s upset. Or pissed. Whatever it is he’s feeling about Dean right now.

“Look,” Dean says at last, glancing at Cas’ profile, “I wasn’t trying to punish you or anything. You get that, right? Cas?”

Cas shifts, as though he has a mortal body and can be uncomfortable the same way Dean can.

“Yes. I get that,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sure.

Dean sighs and drops his head into his hands, propping himself up with his elbows on his thighs.

“Listen, man, it’s just that I didn’t feel right, taking your mojo when I couldn’t fix you up after… Well, it’s not like I even tried.”

He practically feels the heat of Cas’ gaze on him, but he doesn’t look up to meet it. 

“How is that comparable?” Cas asks. “You couldn’t have healed me. I can heal you. And I hurt you, Dean, whether it was a spell or not. I don’t see the point in you continuing to hurt.”

“So you just heal me and we move on?” Dean asks. He means it to sound disbelieving, for it to point out how ludicrous that is, but from Cas’ silence he can tell he hasn’t been understood. “It’s not going to change things, Cas. I’ll still have beaten you up. You’ll still have hit me.”

“Spells. Marks. Mind-control.” Cas lists them off as though they’re just part of everyday life. “Either we forgive ourselves and each other, or we forgive neither.”

That gives Dean pause. Has he forgiven Cas? Not for this time. This time, he went in to it filled with his own guilt. It left no room for blaming Cas. Has he forgiven Cas for what happened in that crypt? He thinks he has. He thinks his problem there was Cas leaving, for Cas not trusting him, and even that he might get now. After all, Dean ran when he had the Mark. It’s not quite the same, but perhaps he can get it. 

“If I let you heal me, will you stop looking like your puppy’s just died?”

It’s dishonest, maybe. He’s already promised Sam he’ll let Cas heal him, especially now most of the injuries are nothing to do with Cas. He sits up and looks at Cas to find the guy is staring wide-eyed at his own hands.

“Cas? Hey, earth-to-Cas. Will you?”

Cas nods. It’s jerky, but Cas can be an odd mix of graceful and awkward. He looks sometimes to be fighting himself and it throws him off balance.

“Fine. Well then. Might as well lay your hands on me. Get it done.”

Dean turns so he’s facing Cas more and tilts his chin up. Cas doesn’t move for a moment. He blinks, rotates his head in a way which is kind of eerie, and regards Dean with eyes that look like about a month’s sleep is needed.

“Cas? Come on. You want to heal me? I’m saying okay. Let’s get going.”

He knows Sam would chide him for being so rushed about this, so impatient, but he’s never liked these moments. They can veer all too easily to something tender, to something he can’t deal with when all the crap that is their lives is still rolling on. It was easier over the phone, telling Cas to look after himself, making jokes about the case. Over the phone there isn’t the same weight to everything.

Finally, Cas lifts his hands, placing one of each side of Dean’s face. It’s the way Dean held Cas’ face in the warehouse. Cas has always mimicked Dean in things. The wash of Grace is quick, efficient, and Dean’s healed almost at once. Almost. He pushes aside the thought that just a few years ago it would have been instantaneous.

“You didn’t tell me you’d been injured so badly,” Cas mutters once it’s done. His hands are still on Dean’s face, his eyes still fixed on Dean’s.

“Yeah. Well, turns out werepires aren’t easy kills. I’m good, now, though.”

Cas keeps looking at him.

“Cas? You can let go. I, er, I could do with you fixing up Sam. He got pretty banged up, too.”

“Of course.”

Cas’ hands leave Dean’s skin only to hover somewhere between Cas’ body and Dean’s own. 

“Sam’s out in the library,” Dean prompts, because now he’s healed up he needs his brother to be fixed, too. 

Nodding, Cas stands, pulling his hands back to himself, and drifts out of the room. It is drifting, too. There’s none of the purposeful stride Dean’s used to. He thought Cas was better, that staying at the bunker for this case would have given him time to be okay, but Cas’ phone-calls as they drove back were less and less focused. They’d put it down to having set Cas loose on Netflix, to him having watched episodes from something like fifteen different shows, all of which had seemed to confuse him on some level. 

Come to think of it, Cas had all that pop culture knowledge from Metatron. No way he should be that clueless about TV these days. 

“Hey, wait up,” Dean says.

He catches Cas partway down the corridor, standing with one hand on the wall. Cas looks irritated, but that’s nothing new.

“I’ll walk with you,” Dean offers lamely, and tugs at Cas’ elbow to get him moving.

Maybe they should have given him something more definite to do than watch TV. Sam pointed out, somewhere about halfway back to the bunker, that Dean didn’t like being benched. When Dean frowned at him, Sam shrugged and suggested Cas felt the same way, that cabin fever might be setting in.

This could be the way cabin fever takes the angel.

“Hi, Cas,” Sam greets as they step into the library. “Did Dean have to drag you away from the TV?”

The smile tipping up the edges of Sam’s lips fades as Cas blinks at him.

“TV?” Sam says. “That’s what you were doing, right?”

Cas narrows his eyes, then seems to catch himself and shakes his head a little. He straightens and smiles.

“Of course. TV. Dean says you need healing?”

He’s getting better at lying anyway, because there was no TV in the room Dean found him in. Could be useful if Cas is more comfortable with tiny stretches of the truth these days, as long as he doesn’t start using it on Dean. 

Sam grimaces as Cas reaches him and sets two fingers against his temple. The cuts knit together, the bruises wither, and Dean doesn’t think about why Cas held him for the healing. It’s probably just because Sam’s never cradled Cas’ face. Monkey see, monkey do. 

“So, what else did you get around to watching?” Sam asks once Cas has pulled back.

“Watching?”

Dean joins them, gesturing Cas into a seat and taking one himself. He’ll get to bed pretty soon, but for right now he’s happy enough to catch up with Cas about his no doubt crappy choices in modern media. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, grinning across at Cas. “You mentioned Daredevil last time we spoke. You all done with that one? Ready to talk about Foggy and Matt?”

Cas just looks at him, his head slightly tilted. 

“I watched the first one,” he says at last, but he doesn’t sound certain. 

“Okay, well, that was hours ago,” Dean points out. “What, five, six hours?”

Sam nods and rubs at his eyes.

“Yeah, just after we stopped for some food. Did you skip to something else after, Cas? Dean’s been telling me about how great that show is. Felt like it took most of the six hours.”

“Hey, the fight-scenes alone are worth a watch,” Dean says, because no-one is taking his joy in the gritty brilliance of Daredevil. He turns back to Cas. “Tell me you at least watched some of the fight-scenes.”

Sam’s yawn takes over before Cas can answer, and he waves away Dean’s look.

“Just tired. Long drive. Aren’t you wanting to get to bed?” Sam asks. “If Cas is done with the TV for the night, I think I’ll turn in.” He pushes his chair back and pauses as another yawn catches him. “Hmm. Thanks for the healing, Cas. Don’t you two stay up all night.”

“Night, Sam,” Dean throws after him, and Sam waves a hand over his shoulder as he goes.

“If you don’t need me, I’ll turn in, too,” Cas says.

Worry clenches at Dean, has him leaning forwards and gripping the arms of the chair as he rakes his gaze up and down Cas. 

“You’re sleeping again?” he asks, because that is never good with Cas, never a sign he’s well and whole.

“Um. No. Not…not exactly. I just thought, if I’m to stay here, I should mimic your schedules. Your patterns.”

Dean relaxes his grip on the arms and sits back, but he keeps looking at Cas.

“You don’t have to pretend to sleep when we do,” he says. “You can read or, well, we can see about setting up a TV for you in that room you were in. Hey, it’s got to be better to see the shows than to just have Metatron drop them into your head, right?”

Cas’ lips press together at the mention of Metatron.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose. But you can’t do that tonight.” He glances at Dean and away, his voice quieter, smaller. “You never like it when I watch over you.”

“Because it’s damn creepy,” Dean shoots back. “Look, there are other options than pretending to sleep or watching me actually sleep. You want something to do overnight, why don’t you have another go at tracing your car? I’ll get my laptop set up for you.”

Cas doesn’t say anything and Dean takes it as agreement. He leaves for bed himself soon after, leaving Cas lit up by the glow of the screen as he taps away one-fingered at the keyboard. Dean rolls himself into his own bed and doesn’t think about going and telling Cas he can sit and watch Dean if he wants to. 

 

************************************

 

Sam’s already up the next morning, puttering about in the kitchen and humming to himself. Dean passes him on the way to get coffee and groans. 

“What are you singing?” he asks.

“Not sure. Something catchy,” Sam says, and pulls an ear-bud out of his ear. Dean hears the tiny, tinny sound and shakes his head, his hands up. “Oh, come on,” Sam says. “It’s catchy!”

It’s only after a mouthful of coffee that Dean can bring himself to take the ear-bud, and he levels Sam with a look of disgust as something cheesy and upbeat pipes down the wire.

“Yeah, okay. It’s good to run to, though,” Sam says. “Cas is in the library if you want to go and talk to someone even older than you.”

Sam twists the ear-bud back into his own ear and bounds out of the kitchen, and Dean pours a second mug of coffee. There’s a chance Cas will want it.

When he gets to the library, Cas is sitting in front of the laptop, his eyes fixed on the screen. Dean sets the second mug down and pushes it over until it’s by Cas’ elbow. Settling into a seat nearby, he leans to check out where Cas is up to in his search and frowns.

“Cas? That screen’s gone blank. What are you staring at?”

He gets no answer.

“Hey, Cas!”

Dean has to lean over and push at Cas’ arm before he gets a response, the angel’s flesh solid and unyielding under his fingers. It does something, though, because Cas blinks and turns to look at him, down at his arm, back at Dean.

“I thought you were going to bed,” he says. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

And just like that, the comfortable feeling of peace that had settled over Dean as they pulled into the bunker’s garage washes away. Three of his fingers still touch Cas’ sleeve. He should pull away, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls the chair closer and shifts his grip so that he’s holding Cas’ arm around the bicep, like that will stop the guy from unraveling and drifting away.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Cas?” he asks. 

“I…” Cas looks away, seeming to look for some answer in his surroundings.

“Is it me going to bed? Because that was hours ago. Hours, Cas.”

“No. No, it can’t be,” Cas says, his expression gaining an edge of panic when he turns back to Dean. “You’ve only been gone a few minutes.”

They sit in silence, Dean holding onto Cas and Cas letting him. Dean runs his mind back over everything since he got back and tightens his grip.

“How long were you sitting in that room by yourself before I found you?” he asks. “How long after we called did you stop watching TV?”

When Cas doesn’t answer, just shaking his head in a way that says he doesn’t have a response, Dean drops his head into his free hand. Cas makes a pained noise, and Dean lifts his head to see Cas’ hand twitching like he wants to reach out and grab hold of something.

“What?”

“I’ve been losing time, I think,” he says, voice strained. “But not when you were talking to me. Not when I can hear you. I…I wasn’t sure, but…”

“But what?” Dean feels the tension in his throat, that iron-tang at the back of his mouth that says panic is just around the corner.

“But I think the spell damaged me more than I realised.” 

Cas finishes with a slump to his shoulders, his sleeve pulling under Dean’s hand like it’s about to slip away. Dean lurches forwards and grabs Cas’ forearm. He’s only just got the guy to stay in the bunker. The whole way back from that hunt, a voice was chattering away, deep in Dean’s mind, that Cas would have left by the time he got back, and when he walked through the library, through the war-room, and Cas wasn’t there, he’d believed it. Finding Cas in that dusty room had let him breathe again. He isn’t ready to have his breath tight in his chest.

“And it’s making you lose track of time?” Dean asks. Cas nods, a tiny movement, as though he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. “When did you first notice?”

“The night the spell was lifted.” Cas is still quiet. It doesn’t feel right. “You and Sam drank your beers, you wouldn’t let me heal you, and you went to bed. Sam spoke to me for a while, and then he went to bed, as well.”

Dean wants to ask what Cas and Sam spoke about for it to be something Cas feels needs including, but there are more important matters. 

“Then what?”

“And then it was four in the morning and I thought it was not yet midnight.”

“Okay,” Dean say. “And after? How many times has it happened since?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes, when I was researching, or watching shows on Netflix, time seemed to skip, but I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, well. Everyone loses time when they’re marathoning a show. Not sure that one gives us solid data. You got any idea what it means? Concrete details, Cas. How do I help you?”

Cas opens his mouth, hesitates, and closes it again. A moment later he closes his eyes.

“Oh, hell no.” Dean sets his jaw. “You are not giving up on me. Cut the crap, Cas. What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Dean, I’m…” Cas heaves a breath, going from no noticeable breathing at all to sucking in air as though that alone might save him. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to have this conversation. “I’m an angel. A seraph.”

“Yeah, I got that. I got that years back.” 

“No, I don’t think you ever did,” Cas says. “Not really. You see me as some…as some ‘dork’ who doesn’t know how to function in the modern world, who needs to be wrapped in a blanket and left behind with TV shows.”

Dean opens his mouth to say that’s not true, but Cas doesn’t seem to be done, rolling right on over him.

“And you see me as a weapon, something that will show up and smite your problems when you decide I should, who will suffer anything I need to until you’re ready for me again. I don’t know how you hold those two views of me together. I’m so fragile to you, and so impervious. But for all that, you don’t get that I’m an angel. This spell, it’s torn into my Grace.”

Cas stops, his lips parted as though he intends to say something else, but no more words fall out. Dean tries to gather himself. This is…this is a lot. Sure, he wants Cas safe, knows there’s not a lot he can do to help. He thought time, and the safety of the bunker, would help. 

“And the spell being lifted, that’s not stopped it?” he asks, because he has to do something, even if he is reeling.

“It stopped it,” Cas says. “I’m not sure if it stopped it soon enough. My Grace was mostly ruined in any case, and this has shredded it. I’m not sure how long it will take to heal. If it will heal. The bonds that hold me together are pulling apart. That’s…I think that’s why I’m losing time. I can’t stay connected to it.”

Dean isn’t sure what to say to that. He opens his mouth but has no comforting sounds to spill into the space between them, no gruff but bracing sounds. 

“Time is just time,” he settles on. “You don’t have to be connected to it. It just is.”

Years of learning to read Cas back when his expressions were so minimal that most people didn’t notice he had them let Dean see the disbelief on the angel’s face. 

“What? You saying it isn’t? Does time work differently for you or something?”

“Much though you refuse to accept it, most things work differently for me.”

That bite in Cas’ words in an old thing, but Dean hasn’t heard it much over the last few years. From the regret that instantly chases across Cas’ face, it’s something he’s been deliberately editing out. Rather than snap back, Dean schools himself to squash the urge and speaks in measured tones.

“Explain it to me. How’s time different for you?”

Cas doesn’t answer to start with. His gaze slips away and wanders round the room, and for a moment Dean thinks he’s gone again. Cas fixes on the far corner, eventually, and that looks to anchor him for the time being.

“Time is just one dimension, Dean,” he says, as though he’s imparting a secret. “Angels are anchored in time, true, but not in the same way that you are. More the way you feel the ground beneath your feet. Only, our true-forms help to make the ground solid.” He stops and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. Dean tries to follow Cas’ words instead of that. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense in human terms.”

And there it is. Cas sounds apologetic. Dean’s noticed it before, of course he has, but Cas seems to feel guilt so much of the time and for so many things that he’s missed this connection before. He thinks, in that moment, he gets what Cas means about making the ground solid, because Dean’s realization has the floor beneath him feeling shaky.

“You know you don’t have to make sense, right?” he tries, even though he’s sure the shapes of these words are wrong, too. “You don’t have to make sense in human terms, I mean.”

“I do if I want you to-” Cas stops, does the lip-licking thing again. “If I want you to understand me.”

Over the years, Dean’s got pretty good at spotting when there’s a gap in someone’s story, and that’s not the word Cas was heading for. He lets it go.

“Sammy and I are brothers. Hell, I raised that kid. And we don’t always understand each other.” He still has hold of Cas with both hands and he only doesn’t grip tighter because he’ll hurt his own fingers if he does. “But when we accept each other? That’s what matters. Just…just tell me about this the best you can. I’ll try to follow.”

And Cas does. He talks about energy differentials and matrices and other crap Dean vaguely remembers from that school where they tested him for math and stuck him in some class full of nerds. His dad closed the case sooner than expected and Dean was out of there, but it left behind a weird sense that there was something he was missing out on. Cas’ words tug at that sense now, and Dean lets go long enough to fetch paper and a pen, to jot down some of what Cas is saying. 

Eventually, Sam wanders in, sweat dripping down his face and forming shapes along his T-shirt. 

“What are you two working on?” he asks, his eyes moving from Dean to Cas, settling briefly on the point where Dean’s left hand rests on Cas’ forearm. He doesn’t say anything about it, but Dean spots the faint smile.

It’s a shame to bring Sam out of his happy mood, but as soon as Dean outlines the current problem his brother’s on the case. Sam remembers some math Dean doesn’t, but neither one of them’s a patch on Cas.

“You could do this for a living,” Sam says at one point, before turning the talk to what Cas means by a tether.

It’s hours later that Dean sits back and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes, groaning at the release of tension in his lower back. He shouldn’t have kept hold of Cas so much, but the closer they got to some sort of solution the more necessary it seemed.

“You’re saying you might just heal up from this, then?” Sam asks. Again, he darts a look at Dean, who just catches it as he drops his own hands to his lap. “But you need something to fix on? And TV didn’t do it?”

Cas shakes his head.

“No. The energy spike is too low. I need something, something stronger.”

“You could try espresso,” Dean says, but his heart isn’t in it. 

“It’s pretty obvious,” Sam says, and looks surprised when the other two look at him with almost blank expressions. “Isn’t it? I think it is.”

“What is?” Cas asks. He sounds surly. Three times during their conversation he drifted, each time when Dean had let go of him and none of them were speaking.

“You need an actual anchor, right?” Sam asks. “Something to keep the ground solid until you’re healed up enough it’s automatic again?”

Cas nods slowly, looking dubious. Or nervous.

“And touch or conversation with one of us works like that, right?” Sam continues. He seems to be warming up to his theme, that light he gets in his eyes when he’s on to something making him almost eager. “So, Dean and I need to take turns to sit with you, to chat.”

“And, what, hug the guy?” Dean asks. 

Sam shoots him a quelling look.

“Pretty sure any king of physical contact helps. Right, Cas?”

“It seems to,” Cas says, reluctantly. 

“Then we can squash up on my bed and watch something, or lots of somethings.” Sam swings himself out of his chair and stretches. “Just let me grab a shower and I’ll take first shift.”

When Sam’s gone, Dean taps his free hand against the pad of paper covered in marks and notes.

“This going to work?” he asks. “And are you okay with this? You’ve never been the most physical person.”

Cas shrugs.

“Until I lost my Grace, my vessel was no more part of me than your jacket is a part of you. I sense energy, Dean. Your idea of physicality doesn’t map onto the way I see the world.”

“See? Or saw? You just said your vessel wasn’t part of you. Is it now?”

Cas shrugs again, but he’s doing that thing where he doesn’t look at Dean.

“A bit. It’s…”

“Hard to explain in human terms. Yeah, I get that. So, you’re okay? With being squished up to Sam on his bed and watching Netflix?”

Dean swears Cas looks uncomfortable.

“Spit it out, Cas. You gotta say if you aren’t okay with something. I’m not going to pick it up from harmonics or whatever.”

They hear the door slam shut as Sam goes into the shower, and Cas waits for the echoes of it to die down before he answers.

“Fine. Then, I’d rather be ‘squished up’ to you, but I’m sure it will be fine.”

Dean gives himself a minute to react to that, finds there’s not as much resistance as he expected, and reaches out for Cas’ hand.

“Fine’s all well and good, but Sam’s going to be in that shower long enough to waste all the hot water and I’ve still not seen the newest episodes of Game of Thrones. How about I fill in until he’s back?”

That gets a smile, and Dean pulls Cas to his feet. 

 

****************************************

 

Sam gets out of the shower and finds the library empty. The faint sound of shouting draws him to his own room, where he stops in the doorway and…stares. 

Dean’s propped up against the headboard, fast asleep. Cas is next to him, one wrist loosely circled by Dean’s fingers, his head resting on Dean’s shoulder. He smiles at Sam but makes no effort to move.

“Okay,” Sam says. There doesn’t seem to be much else to say. 

He smiles at his brother and settles himself in the seat by the desk. If Dean needs him to, Sam will take a turn keeping Cas with them until he’s well, but he’s got the feeling this is something Dean’s going to take on himself. 

He wonders how much Dean will protest when Sam tells him to go and snuggle with Cas on his own bed, and decides to leave it until the end of the next episode. It’s been ages since he’s caught up on his TV.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a mash-up. Part coda, part the result of conversations with [ExpatGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl) and [dimtraces](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces). It is what it is. 
> 
> Might write a more fluffy one, now.


End file.
